Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk outraged after supporting Germany’s far-right party in a primary newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country, leading to the resignation of the newspaper’s opinion editor in a gesture of protest .
Germany will vote in snap elections on Feb. 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party government coalition collapsed for a month in a dispute over how to revitalize the country’s stagnating economy.
Musk’s op-ed for Welt am Sonntag, a sister publication of POLITICO owned by the Axel Springer Group, was published in German over the weekend, the second time this month he has supported Alternative for Germany, or the AfD.
“The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his translated commentary.
He went on to say the far-right party “can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just wishes, but reality.”
The CEO of Tesla Motors wrote that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the state of the country.
The AfD is polling strongly, but its candidate for the top job, Alice Weidel, has no realistic chance of becoming chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.
The best friend of U. S. President-elect Donald Trump, the tech billionaire who is the party’s public symbol in his op-ed.
“The presentation of the AfD as a right-wing extremist is obviously wrong, given that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex spouse from Sri Lanka! Does this remind you of Hitler? Please!”
Musk’s comment sparked a debate in the German media about the limits of relaxed discourse, and the newspaper’s own opinion editor announced her resignation, adding on Musk’s social media platform, X.
“I have always enjoyed directing the opinion segment of WELT and WAMS. Today, an article by Elon Musk gave the impression in Welt am Sonntag. I submitted my resignation after the publication of the document,” wrote Eva Marie Kogel.
A critical article by Welt group editor-in-chief Jan Philipp Burgard accompanied Musk’s op-ed.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his curative approach that the AfD can save Germany is completely wrong,” Burgard wrote.
In response to a request for comment from the German news company dpa, current Welt Group editor-in-chief Ulf Poschardt and Burgard, who will take up his position on January 1, said in a statement that the discussion over Musk’s article was “very informative. Democracy and journalism thrive through freedom of expression.
“This will continue in the direction of the ‘world’ in the future. We will even more decisively expand Die Welt as a forum for such debates,” they wrote to dpa.